The Generous Spirit of the Peer Review Process: Perspectives and Insights From the HRDQ Editorial Team on Providing High‐Quality Reviews

• Author: Valerie Anderson,Claire Gubbins,Mary Lynn Lunn,Andrea D. Ellinger,Jon M. Werner,Kim F. Nimon,Maura Sheehan
• Date: 01 December 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21176
• Published date: 01 December 2013

The Generous Spirit of the Peer

Review Process: Perspectives and

Insights From the HRDQ Editorial

Team on Providing High-Quality

Reviews

Andrea D. Ellinger, Valerie Anderson, Claire Gubbins,

Mary Lynn Lunn, Kim F. Nimon, Maura Sheehan, Jon M. Werner

Are you inclined to “agree,” are you “unavailable,” or do you “decline” when

you receive a personal review invitation from Human Resource Development

Quarterly (HRDQ)? We sincerely hope that you will accept our invitations to

perform reviews when we reach out to personally solicit your expertise.

However, we do acknowledge that many reviewers immediately decline, note

their lack of availability, or send us e-mails acknowledging the personal and

professional commitments that preclude them from contributing to the jour-

nal in the capacity of a reviewer. We fully appreciate that many potential

reviewers are being overly burdened with a high volume of review requests

from many different journals, and that, at times, declining reviews may be

necessary, particularly if declining is better than not delivering (Trevino,

2008). We realize that challenging work and unanticipated life event issues

may present themselves, or that confl icts of interest might arise regarding

author identity, or that performing a review by a specifi ed due date may sim-

ply not be possible.

Yet, the high quality of the manuscripts that we publish in HRDQ is

largely contingent on the high quality and timeliness of the peer review pro-

cess. Therefore, we collectively decided to develop this editorial on perform-

ing high-quality reviews because, in our varied roles, many of us often have

the task of reading the majority of the manuscripts that are sent out for review,

reading all of the feedback provided by the reviewers who are invited to

review a specifi c manuscript, as well as synthesizing the reviewer and editorial

feedback in the process of preparing decision letters. We observe fi rsthand

those reviewers who consistently develop high-quality reviews, but we also

see areas where improvements can be made in further developing reviewer

EDITORIAL

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, vol. 24, no. 4, Winter 2013 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21176 417